


all of my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling

by nonisland



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Canon - Manga, Character Development, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic, Rare Pairing, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: She’ll get to the Celestial Realms, some kind of gruesome and baffling crime will break out, and Dlanor will be able to stop doing paperwork and get back into the field. Erika is, after all, the greatest detective around; it will have to be a particularly tough puzzle to challengeher. So nobody other than Dlanor will do to help her solve it, either.Erika goes on vacation.
Relationships: Furudo Erika/Dlanor A. Knox
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	all of my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragonNinjaAri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonNinjaAri/gifts).



> Once again a “none of my WIPs are cooperating, who wants short twitter fic in the meantime?” situation has gotten completely out of hand. Ashley asked for “a chess piece to take a detective to a multiversal sea” and a thousand words later here we are. Title from Florence + the Machine’s “[All This and Heaven Too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs5KqERhqZ0)” because in 2021 we unironically put Florence songs on disaster girls again.
> 
> * * *

Erika has learned from her mistakes. She packs two rolls of her most adhesive tape and a packet of indelible dye, as well as the usual: a collapsible grappling hook and a coil of ultra-light nylon rope; a case with the necessary supplies to test for several common poisons, as long as she can find a glass beaker somewhere; a periscope; a stethoscope, useful for listening through walls as well as examining bodies; a small, powerful flashlight; and her new wetsuit, camo-patterned and even more reliable than the old one. She will not squander this vacation Lady Bernkastel has offered her, and she will _not_ fail to solve the next case she’s presented with!

“Aren’t you going to bring anything _fun_?” Lambdadelta asks, leaning over Erika’s suitcase. Before Erika can reply, Lambdadelta pauses to wiggle her newly-reattached leg. “Oh, Bern, I think you put it on sideways! You’d better come look.”

It isn’t as if Erika is going on holiday, _or_ as if she’d asked Lambdadelta for her advice. She has never caused Lady Bernkastel anywhere near as much trouble as Lambdadelta has, anyway. “Wherever there is a detective,” Erika reminds Lambdadelta smugly, “there is a crime.”

She manages to fasten her suitcase without sitting on it, but when she turns around neither Lambdadelta nor Lady Bernkastel is even listening any more.

Erika doesn’t announce her departure—she has no need to do such a thing—but she does feel a little strange as she leaves.

Well. That won’t last long. She’ll get to the Celestial Realms, some kind of gruesome and baffling crime will break out, and Dlanor will be able to stop doing paperwork and get back into the field. Erika is, after all, the greatest detective around; it will have to be a particularly tough puzzle to challenge _her_. So nobody other than Dlanor will do to help her solve it, either. She’ll tell whoever is in charge of assignments that no other inquisitor will be good enough, and they’ll _have_ to listen.

That should make Dlanor pretty happy to see her, right? It’s been hard to tell from her letters—she didn’t even write back at all until Erika begged her to ask Will for advice on caring for the cat Lady Bernkastel—but if Erika brings her an adventure, surely that should cheer her up. It would be nice to be fighting with Dlanor on her side again instead of staring at her creepy blank face lit by the glow of her sword.

(Erika still sees that sometimes when she closes her eyes. It’s enough to make her wish she had never called Dlanor a murder doll just for being prissy and boring and not really wanting to _talk_ or _do_ anything except stand around and wait to be useful. People usually react to Erika. She has made herself impossible to dismiss. But the reality of Death Sentence Dlanor was…upsetting. Erika wishes she hadn’t tried to joke about it.)

After a train ride so long Erika starts to wonder if time has destabilized, and an entire morning spent arguing with Customs, Erika makes it into the Celestial Realms with her bag intact. They had wanted to confiscate her ink as witchly magic, but of course her arguments triumphed eventually. She makes it to the 7th District Court complex early in the afternoon. The wing dedicated to the Eiserne Jungfrau is clearly-marked, and there are signs leading to the Offices of Archbishop Dlanor A. Knox—of course, even if there hadn’t been, Erika would have been able to deduce its location. No architecture can defeat her logic.

A receptionist tries to stop Erika outside Dlanor’s office, but she brushes the woman off. When she opens Dlanor’s door, her detective’s senses immediately register the anomalies:

Dlanor had complained about paperwork, but all the papers on her desk are stacked in the out-tray—some of them very haphazardly. Dlanor herself is rising from her desk as Erika enters the room. There is a piece of luggage of some kind on a table next to the door.

Erika opens her mouth.

It had been a _long_ train ride. She wants to protest, to say she had come all this way to see Dlanor. That she had made _plans_. She had come prepared to make this the best shared outing possible, and Dlanor has a _case_? Dlanor is leaving _right now_?

She really doesn’t want Dlanor to be mad at her again. She says, “I see you’ve been called out on a new assignment! Must be exciting getting back out in the field again, huh?”

Dlanor stares at her, brows pinching together a little in puzzlement.

“Have you forgotten?” Erika asks, with the best triumphant laugh she can manage. “Nothing can be concealed from me! Just from the existence of your empty in-tray, I, Furudo Erika, can deduce all of this!”

“You are wrong,” Dlanor says, still frowning.

Erika is never wrong. Erika has worked so hard to be right, to come up with deduced truths that will be worthy of Dlanor’s key. “Impossible,” she says.

Dlanor leaves her desk and picks up the box which is very clearly her luggage, of some sort. “Lady Bernkastel mentioned you would be visiting. I put in a request for vacation time. There is a beach alongside the Sea of Fragments a short walk from here. Would you like to accompany me?”

“What?” Erika asks.

“I have taken the afternoon off,” Dlanor says. Her voice is as precise and crystalline as ever, even while she’s talking about _vacation time_. “I would like to spend it with you.”

Erika opens her mouth again. Erika closes her mouth.

“If you would like,” Dlanor adds, more quietly. “I arranged for a picnic dinner.” The mysterious box certainly could hold a generous picnic dinner for two, instead of clothing and supplies for a few days on a case.

“Ugh, don’t be stupid,” Erika says. “You can’t go to the beach wearing _that_! You should get a sunhat, so you don’t burn up. How could I have been expected to deduce you were planning to go to the beach when you’re wearing your uniform? Nobody could have predicted something like that!”

“All right,” Dlanor says amiably. “Would you like to buy a sunhat as well?”

Her hand brushes Erika’s arm as she walks out the door. Erika stares down at her own arm for a moment, off-balance, before following. She will do better. She won’t miss the next solution. This will be an entirely satisfactory afternoon, with or without a case.


End file.
